


when my time comes, forget the wrong that I've done

by dexdefyingstunts



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Batfamily (DCU), Gen, Grief/Mourning, very brief mentions of StephCass and TimKon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:27:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28606707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dexdefyingstunts/pseuds/dexdefyingstunts
Summary: Dick goes to visit Bruce’s grave by himself, after dark. It’s just always seemed like the right way to do it.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 12
Kudos: 39





	when my time comes, forget the wrong that I've done

**Author's Note:**

> If you read that title and wondered, "Has Dex been listening to Linkin Park and making himself sad again?" Yes. Yes I have. 
> 
> Title is from "Leave Out All the Rest"

Dick goes to visit Bruce’s grave by himself, after dark. It’s just always seemed like the right way to do it.

Dick makes his way through the cemetery, walking the worn and beaten concrete path, lit by a few dim, yellow lights. His arms are full of flowers, bouquets for the dead. He’s wearing a warm coat, wrapped tightly around him to keep out the chill of the dark Gotham winter’s night. Dick never used to feel the cold, before. Not when he was Robin. It’s funny how things change.

Dick crosses the sparsely-watered grass and makes his way to the Wayne plot. There’s a row of five graves set in the corner, there. Dick’s brought flowers for all of them.

The first two are the oldest, a matching pair, weathered by the past forty-odd years. Dick never brought them flowers, until Bruce wasn’t around to do it anymore. Dick sets the bouquets against the stones, and pauses a moment, looking at the names on the graves. But only a moment, and then he keeps walking.

The third grave is empty, still. If Dick has anything to say about it, it’ll stay empty for a long time yet. But Dick brings flowers for it anyway.

(Jason used to hate him doing that. He told Dick once that if he really wanted to give Jason flowers, he could damn well give them to him in person. Dick responded the only possible way he could have- by filling Jason’s apartment with bouquets of flowers, top to bottom. Dick gives a small smile, alone in the dark, as he rests the flowers on Jason’s empty grave, remembering Jason’s face when he discovered his apartment utterly covered in flowers. Dick had put them _everywhere_ , in the shower, in the oven, in Jason’s shoes. _Making up for lost time, little wing_ , Dick had said, grinning cheerfully in the middle of Jason’s apartment. Jason had rolled his eyes so hard they threatened to come right out of his skull, but he’d also gripped Dick in a death-grip bear hug and not let go for a while. So it turned out alright, in the end.)

At the fourth grave, Dick sets his bouquet down and then stops, resting his hand on top of the gravestone.

“Hey, Alfie,” Dick says. Dick rubs his thumb against the cold, rough stone. “How are you doing?” There’s no answer, of course, no noise except the muffled sounds of the city in the distance, the quiet whisper of the wind. Dick breathes steadily, in and out, and closes his eyes. “It was Christmas, last week. We all missed you, at the house.”

There’s a twinge of pain in Dick’s chest, but he presses on. “Jason used your turkey recipe, and we all agreed it’s almost as good as yours was. Dami made your gingerbread, for the kids. You should have seen the size of some of the towers they built. Tim swears we’ve got a couple of engineers on our hands. Steph started a great campaign of chucking marshmallows down everyone’s Christmas sweaters, and you can imagine how well that ended.”

Dick smiles fondly, remembering. He opens his eyes, blinking at the headstone. He’s not sure what else there is to say. He wonders if Alfred’s listening, wherever he is. If he can see them, these days. He wonders what Alfred would say, if he could see them now, now that they’re all getting so old. _Nonsense, Master Dick_ , he can just hear Alfred saying, with that twinkle in his eye. _Barely grown, the lot of you. Once you’re old as I am, then you can talk about old._ Dick gives a small chuckle at just how right that is. If Alfred was still here, he wouldn’t be having any of it.

Dick rubs his thumb against the headstone again. There’s not much for him to say. Nothing Alfred doesn’t already know, if he is actually listening. Anyway, it’s not Alfred he’s come to see, not this time at least. “Bye, Alfie. Love you.”

At the last grave, Dick stops and sits down.

It’s the newest headstone. Still shiny and unweathered, though it’s been there a few years. There’s grass growing over the grave, now. If it was springtime, there might be wildflowers on it, too.

Dick stares at the inscription, reading it over and over as his fingers tangle in the grass next to him. “BRUCE THOMAS WAYNE,” it reads. And below that, in smaller script, there’s a Bible verse: “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.”

(Tim came up with that one. But they’d all agreed it felt right for Bruce, who fought the good fight right up until the very end. Who never could have done anything else.)

Dick sits there for a long while in silence, feeling the dark quiet of the night around him. He got used to the dark a long time ago. But still, after all this time, it feels like the night is Bruce’s. Like it belongs to him. He might not be the specter haunting Gotham, anymore, but sometimes it certainly feels like he's still haunting Dick.

It hurts, to visit. To remember that Bruce is gone, and that he isn’t coming back, this time. To remember all that Bruce was, and all that he wasn’t, and to see him here, laid to rest at last. Gotham’s Bat might be immortal, but the man who created it never was. Dick breathes in, and breathes out, feeling the pain welling up in his chest. It would hurt more not to visit. Not to come here, when he misses Bruce so badly, even after all this time, that he feels something might rip out of his chest.

 _I miss you,_ Dick thinks. _Why didn’t we use the time better, when you were alive? We did we waste so much time, so many years, being angry at each other? You were my family._

_I miss you. I love you. I wish you were home._

Dick doesn’t say any of that.

“Do you remember,” Dick says aloud. His voice is hoarse even to his own ears. “Do you remember, when I first came to live with you? I couldn’t sit still, in those days. I climbed anything I could find. Must have been so strange, suddenly having a kid in your life that couldn’t stay off the roof.” Dick laughs softly. “God, I got into everything, didn’t I. Do you remember the time you found me in the chandelier in the ballroom? I liked to swing on it, cause it was almost like a trapeze. Alfie was worried I was gonna pull it out of the ceiling, and end up crushed to death under the weight of the damn thing. But I just fell asleep up there, tucked right in with the lights. Guess I’ve always loved a perch.”

Dick swallows hard. “You must have found me. Cause I fell asleep up there, but I woke up in my bed. Tucked away, safe as anything. And the very next week, you told me you had something to show me, down in the cave. You’d built a trapeze set for me, a whole gym down there. God, I was so excited to be able to fly again.”

It had been the best present. Better than a present, really. Better than Christmas. How can Dick say how much it meant to him? The trapeze was home, in a way. Bruce had given him his home back. It’s still Dick’s favorite flying gym, the one he keeps practice in these days, when he finds the time.

Dick starts again. “B, do you remember Steph and Cass’s wedding? When they both insisted you had to dance with them? So you did the first dance, and Steph kept stepping on your toes on purpose, just to see if she could get you to break character. And you made it till the very end without making a single face, till you went to dip her and she went deadweight, and you just dropped her on the floor.” Dick grins. His eyes are still welling up, but it’s impossible not to grin, remembering that moment. “So we’re all totally dying laughing, me and Cass and everyone watching, including Steph, flat on her ass in her wedding dress. And you reach down to give her a hand up, and she just pulls you down with her.” Steph and Cass really did have the best wedding. Dick’s never been to a bad wedding, but that one was something special. “And the two of you are just down on the floor, and Steph’s laughing so hard she can’t breathe. And she didn’t get up till you told her she couldn’t dance with her wife from down on the floor.”

“Remember when you taught me how to drive? I was so sure I’d be great at it, cause I’d already mastered the Batmobile. But then it turns out that your crazy souped-up AI of a tank is _not_ the same as a regular car, and I nearly spun us out in the parking lot?”

“Remember the night me and Babs went after Killer Croc, and you just dived into the sewers after us? And then all three of us had to walk home covered in muck and smelling like death? I thought Alfred was gonna murder us, tracking that stuff into the cave.”

“Remember that picnic at the Kents' house, when we all played paintball? And you managed to get Clark right in the back of the neck, even though he’s totally capable of just _catching_ a paintball. And then later it turned out he’d been distracted cause he’d overheard Tim and Kon making out behind the barn? I don’t think Timmy stopped blushing for a week.”

“Remember the first night we went out as Batman and Robin? I barely remember what happened, just how excited I was. It was like doing the trapeze with Mom and Dad again. But different. Bigger, with the whole city ahead of us. I remember the view seemed bigger than life, back then. You know the one, from your favorite gargoyle, the one on top of the south street bank. Don’t even pretend like you don’t have a favorite gargoyle, B, we all know you do. And I swung across the rooftops for the first time, and you caught me. God, I’ll never forget that.”

_Do you remember? Do you remember?_

Dick keeps going like that. He knows he can stay for hours, just recanting, reliving both the glory days and all the smaller moments, the quiet moments, the ones you forget if you don’t make note of them.

There’s so many memories to go through. All the best bits of Bruce, everything Dick had loved about him, everything he wants to remember. Dick would be lying if he said he didn't have any ugly memories, any painful ones, ones that hurt too much to look at, even now. There’s more than a few parts that don’t bear mentioning. But Dick doesn't want to think about those. Because this, these parts? Dick’s mentor, his partner, his friend, his _father_. That’s what Dick’s going to hold onto, now that Bruce is gone.

These are the memories Dick is going to keep.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked it/are more sad now than you were before, please yell at me in the comments!
> 
> I'm also on [tumblr](https://dexdefyingstunts.tumblr.com/) if you wanna come talk there!


End file.
